Professor Robert Bickers of the Department of Historical Studies has been awarded £34707 for a project entitled ‘Treaty port China and its legacies, 1842-1999’. Professor Bickers specialises in modern China, and the history of colonialism, and in particular of the British empire and its relations with China and the history of Shanghai (1843-1950s).

Dr Siobhan Shilton of the Department of French receives £23738 for her project, ‘Diasporic encounters: Journeys between France and the Maghreb in contemporary art’. Dr Shilton specialises in francophone postcolonial studies, and has a particular interest in representations of journeys between the cultures of the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, former ‘Indochina’, and France.

More than 250 academics in the fields of arts and humanities applied for research funding as part of AHRC Research Grants scheme. The scheme is intended to support well-defined research projects enabling individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research. The programme provides grants for projects with a full economic cost between £20,000 and £1,000,000 for a varying duration up to a limit of 60 months.